1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for racing control of operations in system management.
In the maintenance and management of switching systems, transmission systems, network systems, and various other systems, various measures may be considered for dealing with operations newly requested for a controlled object the same as the controlled object of operations now being executed or a related controlled object, such as, (i) accepting it unconditionally, (ii) making it wait until the end of the operations now being executed, (iii) rejecting it unconditionally, and (iv) accepting it conditionally by racing control. Among these, the above measure of (iv) accepting it conditionally by racing control enables a smooth control in the system management. Among the above systems, there are systems adopting different protocols, but in such systems as well, it is desired to make racing control possible.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the protocol for managing switching systems, transmission systems, network systems, and other various systems, for example, there are the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) in the Internet, Common Management Information Protocol (CMIP) as an Open System Interconnection (OSI) network management protocol, and various protocols unique to the system structure from the maintenance and management terminal by a work station etc.
Further, in the OSI model, there has been known a structure wherein the management side is defined as a “manager”, a system side at which the switching, transmission apparatus, etc. are managed is defined as an “agent”, a virtual data base of the information necessary for the management, that is, a management information base (MIB), is stored in this agent, a request for acquisition or setting the value of the object to be managed is made from the manager to the agent, and the agent responds to this request and notifies the manager of a generated event such as an abnormality occurring in the agent.
Further, as operations of the above SNMP, there are (1) “GET REQUEST” indicating reading of data of a specified MIB modification from the MIB, (2) “GET NEXT REQUEST” indicating reading of data next to the specified MIB modification in accordance with the order of the MIB, (3) “SET REQUEST” indicating setting a MIB modification to a specified value, (4) “GET RESPONSE” indicating a response from the agent to the request, and (5) “TRAP” indicating notification of the occurrence of an abnormality or event from the agent to the manager. Basically, the manager performs polling with respect to the agent.
Further, there has been known a management system using a Common Management Information Protocol/Common Information Management Service (CMIP/CMIS) specified by the OSI model. The Common Information Management Service (CMIS) can be roughly classified into management operation services from the manager to the agent and notification services from the agent to the manager. The services may be summarized as (1) “M-GET” indicating the reading of an attribute value of a managed object, (2) “M-SET” indicating the setting and alteration of an attribute value (replacement of an attribute value, addition of an attribute value, removal of an attribute value, and setting of an attribute value at default) of an object to be managed, (3) “M-ACTION” indicating an instruction for action on a managed object, (4) “M-CREATE” indicating creation of a managed object, (5) “M-DELETE” indicating deletion of a managed object, (6) “M-CANCEL-GET” indicating cancellation of the previous M-GET operation, and (7) “M-EVENT-REPORT” for reporting a state transition, error, etc. occurring in a managed object.
Further, in multiple operations under the CMIP, since there are no ID's for racing decision included in commands under the CMIP, some sort of racing control becomes necessary. Therefore, in the related art, an OSI interface apparatus for translating CMIP operations into internal commands and performing racing control while treating the commands as commands groups has been proposed (refer for example to Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 6-303288).
In recent years, progress has been made in standardization of managed object models. Along with this, maintenance and management interfaces for communication systems, transmission systems, and other systems are now being adopted as interfaces based on standardized object models in addition to formats inherent to the manufacturers or formats peculiar to the management system.
Further, orderly execution of the operations for system management requires racing control between commands. In CMIP operations as well, it would be effective to carry out racing control at a stage before the operations. Since however the unit of processing, in principle, becomes the unit of an object instance showing the actual form of a controlled object in the OSI model, control from a viewpoint different from the racing control between commands becomes necessary.
Looking at racing control in such CMIP operations, in the related art mentioned above, CMIP operations are translated into internal commands including commands identification information and racing control is carried out between commands groups to which that internal commands belong. Accordingly, the processing is increased for translating operations to internal commands and racing decisions cannot be carried out in units of object instances, so there is a problem in that racing could not be sufficiently controlled.
Further, in systems for supporting CMIP operations as well, it is also necessary to execute operations of a format inherent to the manufacturer or a format peculiar to the system, that is, inherent to the system. In this case, orderly execution of both CMIP operations and operations inherent to a system based on other protocols requires racing control between these operations. There has not, however, been any solution of this point in the related art.